arrybegan dabbling in darkrooms as a schoolboy and had his first picture published - taken with a box camera of afire in the local cricket club’s pavilion - when he was 12 in the Manchester Evening News. Starting a career in printing and newspapers, he trained in typography and graphic design. When, later, a retiring director left a pile of ’Amateur Photographer’ magazines in the office where Barry worked in production management, the bug bit again. Moving into advertisement sales Barry began to design, write and illustrate client’s advertisements using his own photographs - from furniture to fashion. Simultaneously, in line with the reportage movement of the 60s, he documented the people and places as his home Lancashire cotton town went through the virtual death of that industry and its community culture.

During this period Barry, who had joined the local photographic society, says his film exposure and printing technique were honed and polished by two fellow society members who were consummate craftsmen of the old school. But Barry did not fit happily in the photographic society scene, and in company with a professional graphic artist, moved into amateur film making along with a very successful local creative group. Barry’s career in newspapers progressed until in 1982 he became general manager of a newspaper group.

In 1986, after the shock of the premature death of his film making partner, Barry resumed still photography spending much time alone in remote places. Barry says he was driven by the need to express a theme of man’s life, death and regeneration through the landscape - of man’s temporariness. In his striving for perfection, in trying to distil three coloured dimensions into two in monochrome, Barry isn’t just striving for technical excellence, he is aiming to capture the essence of the fourth dimension - the timelessness of the stage on which man walks. "Or is it timeless?" he asks.

Barry launched the Fine Print Photographer’s Workshop in Chepstow in 1989 to promote the highest quality in archival black and white prints as a medium of uniquely penetrating vision for artists, observers and commentators. Three years later his first book, ‘Elements’, distilling a lifetime’s technical experience and feelings about the art of photography, became an instant best seller. He received recognition in the Ilford Awards, and now runs occasional Masterclasses for them. He has evolved several highly specialist developers and processing solutions which he has brought to the market.

Now in his 50s, he has a wife and one child at home in Monmouthshire- Giles, and two adult children, Karl who photographs, and Gail who modelled professionally before becoming a physiotherapist.